VPNs with servers in Nicaragua

The data include the name and address of the user assigned an IP address, connection and disconnection times, and the protocol and port used (art. 3); they may be given only to the National Police or the Public Ministry (art. 4). Since Law 1219 of 2024 the Cybercrime Law reaches authors, accomplices and anyone who facilitates an offence, in or outside Nicaragua (art. 2). Whether a VPN operator is a covered operator is not established.

A district criminal judge, on the request of the National Police or the Public Ministry, may order a person to hand over information held in an information system, order a service provider to supply data on a user, seize a system, and make the content of a system inaccessible or remove it (Law 1042, art. 39). Preservation of traffic, connection and access data may be ordered for up to ninety days, renewable once.

Article 30, as reformed by Law 1219 (11 September 2024), punishes publishing or spreading, through information technology, social networks or mobile applications, false, distorted or other information that deliberately causes alarm, fear, panic or anxiety with three to five years’ imprisonment and 300–500 day-fines. Harm to a person’s honour or reputation carries two to four years.

Information that incites discrimination, hatred or violence on racial, religious or political grounds, or endangers economic and social stability, public order, sovereign security or public health, carries five to ten years. Accomplices receive the same penalty, and organisers, financiers and those facilitating mass dissemination face an increase of up to two thirds; legal persons are liable (art. 30 bis).

The Cybercrime Law requires the authorisation of a district criminal judge to obtain and preserve data in information systems (art. 39). Matters it does not provide for fall to the Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code, Law 735 on organised crime and Law 787, the Personal Data Protection Law (art. 45). The order of the rows is the security score, and a server’s location is not a recommendation.